Police need help of public

Monday

Jul 22, 2013 at 6:00 AM

By Clive McFarlane

If a neighborhood is a living entity, then its response to neglect and abandonment should be predictable.

An abandoned apartment building or house will soon become overrun with weeds. The exit of anchoring businesses and institutions makes it easier for the illicit trades that chip away at the quality of life. The perceived slow response or inattention of city officials can cre­ate distrust and disillusionment.

This is the reality in many areas of the city, including the Grafton Street/Vernon Hill neighborhoods, which have not only been hit hard by the housing crisis but have also lost stable institutions through the downtown move of St. Vincent Hospital and the closure of a church, a school and a fire station.

The repercussions on the community could be heard in the pleadings of residents who showed up at Worcester Academy Wednesday evening for an informational session on a new policing program. The city hopes it will create the safety and tranquility necessary to aid revival of the area.

Deputy Police Chief Steve Sargent described the program as a virtual police precinct, which will include two supervisors, a route officer, two foot patrol officers, and a traffic officer. Members of the city's gang unit and vice squad will also be deployed as needed.

Two officers from the department's Community Impact Division will work with business owners, residents and neighborhood groups to identify and address ongoing concerns.

During the meeting, residents gave Deputy Chief Sargent, who will be managing the program, an earful of their current concerns.

There were business owners who wanted the police to stop the frequent vandalism of their stores. There were residents who wanted them to get motorists to begin respecting crosswalks and for them to put a stop to after-hours gatherings that leave condoms, needles, syringes and feces in the area.

One woman, a longtime member of a crime watch group, wanted them to get the owner of an abandoned building to cut the weeds and creeping ivies impairing her crime watch duties by blocking her lines of sight.

A business owner wanted a traffic signal moved because in its current place it was creating congestion and promoting speeding.

One resident who lives just outside the experiment worried that the program will push the criminal elements into her area, which she said is already heavily saturated with drug dealing. This resident carried a folder with notations on the buildings and other sites at which drugs were being dealt within her community, as well as the time periods in which the drugs are being sold.

A mother and member of her neighborhood crime watch group for years, the resident said she keeps a folder and continues to engage the police, even though things seem to be getting worse in the past several years.

'But I don't stop because I am petrified something will happen to my kids,' she said.

One hopes that the new policing program will help put this neighborhood back together.

But the police will need the help of residents if they are to succeed. For this reason, the turnout at the informational session was disappointing. The audience was primarily white, and in a neighborhood as diverse as the Grafton/Vernon streets area, that is troubling.

'We will engage the minority community. We are going to reach out and work with them,' Deputy Chief Sargent said.

He and his team should, but the minority community must also do a better job of engaging with the police if the full potential of this program is to be achieved.